


echoes knocking on locked doors

by achapterends



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Crack, Established Relationship, Fluff, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, M/M, Post-One Direction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 07:56:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10407426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achapterends/pseuds/achapterends
Summary: Louis and Nick inadvertently move into a haunted house.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Not too sure how this happened but here it is!
> 
> Massive thanks to Adri for encouraging me to keep writing and helping edit the finished thing!! This one's for you.
> 
> Thanks for stopping by, hope you enjoy :)
> 
> (title from Funhouse by P!nk)

“Where the fuck are my keys.”

Nick doesn’t even look up from his phone. His thumb keeps scrolling and his eyes stay fixated on whoever’s Instagram feed he’s currently caught up in. With his other hand, he’s rubbing his belly over his t-shirt. Pig is curled up at the opposite end of the couch, her head resting on Nick’s leg. She makes a barely audible noise in her sleep. 

“Hmm.”

Louis cocks his hip and makes a gesture of disbelief. Nick  _ still  _ isn’t paying attention to him. He’s running late and he’s lost his keys and his boyfriend doesn’t even want to  _ look _ at him, let alone help him. Louis’ only option is to toe off his shoes and hurl one across the room towards Nick’s big head.

Nick yelps so loud it wakes the dog up and she starts whining. “Oh, now look what you’ve gone and done.” The look he shoots Louis is scornful but only half serious. “It’s okay, Pig, ignore the mean man.”

“The nerve you have, Grimshaw.” Louis retrieves his shoe (it’d bounced off Nick’s head and settled on the rug) and grudgingly pets the top of Pig’s head as an apology. “Are you gonna help me find my keys, or what?”

Nick tilts his head back and meets Louis’ eyes. He pulls a face like he’s concentrating really hard. “Or what.” 

“Figures. God, you’re a wanker.”

Nick laughs out loud. “But I’m  _ your  _ wanker.” He falls back into the mountain of pillows and blankets on the sofa. 

Louis shuffles around the kitchen, jacket slipping off his shoulder and only one of his shoes properly on, in a desperate search for his car keys. He checks the fruit bowl, the cupboard where they keep the dog food, and the fridge, before giving up and falling to his arse on the linoleum. He sighs exasperatedly and puts his head in his hands. 

Nick is watching something on his phone, completely unbothered by the commotion. “I want a divorce.” Louis deadpans.

“Pffft,” Nick scoffs. “Like I’d ever marry you.”

Louis never does find his keys and he ends up having to jog round to Zayn’s two hours late. 

 

Louis is exhausted. He’s had a long day that consisted mainly of getting high, playing video games, and some songwriting, once he’d finally made it to Zayn’s apartment, that is. Rain lashes against the window pane, the glass rattling with the wind. It’s a bitter and unforgiving winter’s night, but Louis is warmer than ever curled up under the blankets on his king sized bed. With a content sigh, he burrows further down into the soft, plush mattress and shuts his eyes, a sudden feeling of tiredness taking over his body. He relaxes into it, and begins to slip out of consciousness to the sounds of silence save for the storm outside. 

The bed heaves and Louis is startled out of his reverie. “There’s a ghost in the house.”

Louis pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales deeply, pulling himself up from the bed so he’s sat in an upright position. “A what.”

“A  _ ghost,  _ Louis! I saw it with my own eyes!” Nick looks genuinely frightened when Louis manages to blink the sleep out of his eyes and focus on the situation at hand. Or rather, Nick’s face right in front of his. 

“Nicholas.” Louis says through gritted teeth. “It’s late. I’m tired.” He falls back down to the bed and kicks at the covers, positively grumpy and uncomfortable now Nick’s gone and ruined everything. Louis imagines that Nick has been watching some shitty reality show again, one of those celebrity ghost hunt specials that always run late at night. He always scares himself witless like that, even though he’s a grown man. Louis, despite his annoyance, shoots for a half hearted reassurance anyway. “Ghosts aren’t real.” 

Nick isn’t having any of it. He petulantly slams his fists against the bed, face drip white and eyes wide with horror. “I saw it, Louis. It was all see through and ghostly like a ghost because that’s what it  _ was _ !”

Louis rolls his eyes dramatically, choking back a laugh. “Nick, babe. I promise you there’s no ghost in here. It’s a new build house, we made sure of that when we bought it.” 

There’s a flash of something like realisation on Nick’s face, before it suddenly drops. “Did we check what the land was used for before they built the houses?”

Louis raises one eyebrow. “Yeah, I did.” Nick looks at him expectantly, and Louis could tell him the truth, but he loves to mess around with him. “They told me it was a slaughterhouse for whiny radio DJs.”

The punch in the arm he gets for that one is more than gratifying. 

“I’m being dead serious.” Nick’s voice is solemn and riddled with nerves.

“Ha.” Louis vocalises. “ _ Dead _ serious.”

If looks could kill, Louis would be six feet under the earth. “You really are a prick.”

Louis hums playfully in agreement as he fluffs his pillows. He half considers exiling Nick to the couch, but he’s not  _ that _ much of an arse. Nick, bless his poor, middle aged heart, is obviously very upset by the ghost shenanigan, and if there’s one thing Louis’ good at it’s cuddling people until they feel better.

“If I’m such a prick then why did you marry me,” Louis pokes Nick’s side in an attempt to entice him into bed. When Nick’s only response is a long blink, Louis tugs at his shirt until he has no choice but to lay down next to Louis. “Hmm?”

Nick instinctively wraps an arm around Louis’ waist and pulls him closer. “I didn’t, popstar.”

“Not yet.” Louis mutters, circling Nick’s ring finger with his own. “But you will someday.”

Nick kisses the back of his head. “If you’re lucky.”

They fall asleep like that, the storm unrelenting and the ghost long forgotten about.

 

It stays forgotten about until three days later, when Nick’s alarm goes off at some ungodly hour as a harsh reminder that it’s a weekday and he has work. He stumbles out of bed and heads for the shower, tripping over a pair of Louis’ vans (that he’s already told him to put away  _ twice _ ). He curses under his breath and reaches down to grab them and throw them in the closet as he walks past it. 

Louis is a deadweight, still asleep soundly even when Nick comes out of the bathroom. It’s an easy life, being a member of one of the world’s biggest boy bands. Nick would say that he’s envious, but he’d be lying. 

Entirely too ungraciously, Nick manages to throw together a somewhat presentable outfit in the dim light of their bedroom. He opts for a big orange sweater that smells like Louis, faded skinny jeans, and a pair of converse he’s had since his early twenties. He’s fixing his hair in the mirror, almost ready to leave for the studio, when he catches glimpse of something in the reflection.

The noise that’s ripped out of him is the literal embodiment of ‘screaming bloody murder’.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Louis yelps, jumping out of bed with a start. Nick is stood in the centre of the room, jaw to the floor, pointing wordlessly at Louis’ vans.

The same ones he’d put away not even twenty minutes ago.

“Louis.” His voice is barely a whisper. “Louis, we’re moving out.”

 

“He  _ what _ ?” 

Louis picks at a hangnail as he flicks absent mindedly through a tabloid magazine, phone balanced between his ear and his shoulder. “He’s convinced we’re haunted, Harry.  _ Haunted _ . Have you ever heard something so ridiculous.”

On the receiving end of the call, Harry shuffles about until Louis hears him fall onto his respective sofa. “Maybe you are.” He says with a mouth full of food, and Louis doesn’t have to see him to know he’s pouting. Almost ten years of friendship has meant that Louis knows Harry better than he knows himself, and a phone call is hardly a barrier. 

“Don’t entertain him. I don’t want you speaking to him about this, okay?”

No matter what he says, Harry will talk to Nick about this. This is a fact that Louis is too sure of.

“I’m just saying, Lou.” Louis closes the magazine and abandons it on the kitchen table, pushing himself up off the chair as Harry theories in his ear. “It’s not impossible, is it? You should do a Ouija board.”

Louis’ eyes nearly bulge out of his head. “I don’t play with demons, Harry.”

“You said you didn’t believe in them ten seconds ago!” Harry squawks, chuckling at Louis’ expense.

“I  _ don’t _ .” Louis retorts. “Yeah, there’s been some… stuff. My keys disappeared and my shoes…  _ reappeared _ or something. But.” Louis pauses, gnawing on his bottom lip. “You know what, I’m over this entire conversation.”

Harry is grinning, and Louis wishes he were there so he could punch him in his stupid mouth. “I’ll send you my exorcist’s number – great guy!” 

Louis groans into the speaker and hangs up. Pig is waiting at his feet, looking up at him with expectant eyes. It’s dinner time and Louis has a dog to feed. He’ll deal with this later.

 

One of Nick’s favourite things to partake in is karaoke. Louis and their neighbours aren’t so keen on this, mostly because Nick chooses god awful songs to cover. He’s on his fourth glass of wine and firing up Bananarama on the karaoke machine, handing a microphone to a less than eager but equally drunk Louis, when there’s a pounding at the front door.

The dogs start barking incessantly, even when Nick hushes them. 

“If it’s the police coming to arrest you because of your terrible and loud singing, I’m divorcing you.” Louis deadpans into his wine, kicking his legs up onto the footstool. His feet are bare and his jeans are rolled up far enough that his triangle tattoo is on full view, and he smiles at it fondly, feeling fuzzy from the alcohol. 

“Not married, pet!” Nick hollers from the hallway, and Louis can hear the telltale sound of the locks being opened even over the dogs’ yapping. They’d invested in extra security when they moved in, for peace of mind and because, even though One Direction have long since been on hiatus, Louis is still quite famous. Nick is too, if you ask him. 

Louis waits for someone to come barging through the front door (his bets are on Harry or Niall), but no one does. Instead, he hears Nick retreating back to the living room, steps cautious at first, and then fast and long strides. 

He looks shaken up when he returns, but he doesn’t say anything. Bananarama are singing about Venus and Nick takes a hearty swig of his wine. 

“Sooooo,” Louis teases. “You gonna tell me who was at the door? Was it your bit on the side? I always had a feeling that you were chea-”

“Shut the fuck up!” Nick snaps. His face tells Louis that he regrets it as soon as the words are out of his mouth, but his actions speak for themselves. He shuts off the tv and there’s just a high pitched buzz as the the karaoke machine winds now. Stinky jumps up onto the couch and settles himself on Louis’ lap. 

Louis is glaring at Nick. “Right.” His voice is tight. “Whatever.”

Nick sinks into an armchair and holds his head in his hands. “Sorry. You’ll laugh at me if I tell you what it was.” 

Louis smoothes his thumb over Stinky’s fur, setting his now empty glass on the side table. “I won’t.” Louis sounds offended.

Nick meets his eyes. “You will.”

“Okay,” Louis admits, throwing his hands up in a show of premature guilt. “I probably will. I can’t help it that everything you say and do is ridiculous. Just look at your hair, mate.  _ Ridiculous _ .”

Nick runs a hand through said hair (it is quite big today) before he shakes his head and trains his eyes back on Louis’. “You’re awful.”

“I’ve been told, darling.” 

Nick sighs, long and exasperated. “There was no one at the door. I checked the garden, too. No one was there.”

Louis clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It’s been awhile since they’ve had any hiccups, but he knows what Nick is going to say. Louis decidedly argues against it before he can. “It’ll be kids playing knock a door run, or summat.”

“Maybe.” Nick levels. “I think it might’ve been–” he pauses, side eyes the room, and lowers his tone so his voice is hushed, “–  _ the ghost _ .”

With the dog tucked under his arm, Louis stands up and groans obtusely into the air. “If I hear anything else about this bloody ghost I swear–”

Louis can’t finish his sentence because from the other side of the sitting room, a book flies off the shelf and clatters to the floor.

Nick is out of the door faster than Louis can keep up with him.

 

It’s an intervention, is what the others are calling it. Nick’s friends and Louis’ friends and everyone in between are round at their house. Harry is burning sage in the bedroom while Liam tries to pitch sales; Alexa is holding Nick’s hands between hers to stop them from shaking so much, and Niall and Zayn are asking Fiona if anything strange has been happening at the studio. 

All in all, it’s a very anticlimactic attempt at ridding the Tomlinson-Grimshaw home of its otherworldly guest.

Louis is trying to decipher a tutorial he’s pulled from Google. It’s aptly titled “How To Cleanse Your House of Unwanted Entities” and it’s accredited by three different priests, apparently. Louis thinks it’s all bullshit. He’s never been one for the supernatural, but he’s seen evidence of it now. In all honesty, he thinks he’d quite like shacking up with a ghost, as long as his things stay intact and he can get a decent night’s sleep every once in awhile. Nick, on the other hand, is convinced the ghost is out to get him and won’t rest until it’s gone.

Hence the intervention.

“I think we just have to ask it nicely.” Louis offers.

Harry’s obnoxious laugh bounces off the walls. “Well, no wonder it hasn’t left. You two are quite possibly the rudest people I’ve ever met.”

Both Nick and Louis stick their tongues out at him. Point proven.

Liam takes a break from promoting his new album to the group to add to the conversation. “What if it’s one of those situations where the ghost can’t move on?”

Louis’ urge to roll his eyes is overwhelmingly hard to resist. “I’m pretty sure that happens in films, Liam. This is real life we’re talking about.”

“I’m just saying, Louis.”

“Let him speak, you twat.” It’s Nick, offering Louis a cold glance that Louis returns with an over the top air kiss. If anything, Louis’ behaviour pisses him off more than his blatant ignorance to the situation. 

Zayn pipes up, tugging at the drawstrings of his hoodie. He pulls it taut around his face so only his nose is poking out. Whether he meant for it to be comedic or not is debatable, but it makes Louis snort anyway. “He has got a point, Tommo. Stop being so facetious.”

“Louis doesn’t know what that word means, dear.” Nick comments slyly, and Louis half considers crossing the room just so he can kick Nick in the shin. 

“I’m not being facetious, I’m being realistic.”

Liam gestures wildly to the congregation in the bedroom. “As if  _ any _ of this is realistic!” Harry’s face is a picture, his lips drawn in a straight line like he’s trying not to laugh as he waves the sage around solemnly.

“I think,” Alexa says gently, “we’re all being a bit dramatic. I’m sure that whatever is going on here can be explained.”

This time last week, Louis would have agreed. Ever since The Book Incident, however, more things have mysteriously disappeared, or flown across the room. Nick will wake him up in the middle of the night to point out the quiet footsteps in the hallway, pacing outside their bedroom door. Louis will be watching TV when it will change channels even though the remote is nowhere near him. Hell, even the dogs have been acting strange.

Louis is certain that they’re being haunted. Call it a change of heart, but he really does believe Nick. 

“Let’s say, hypothetically, that the ghost is… trapped here.” Zayn starts, grabbing the sage out of Harry’s hand (much to his dismay) and ashing it out on the dresser. Nick looks ready to pounce, but Louis settles him with a hand on his chest. “We need to find out what’s keeping it tied to this world.”

Fiona hums and nods, a bit  _ too _ sarcastically. Niall looks plaintive and bored; Louis is convinced he only came along for the promise of free beer which they have yet to bring out to the party. 

“Exactly!” Liam cries excitedly. 

Harry’s pacing the room, practically examining every last inch of Nick and Louis’ belongings. He’s even tied his hair back which means he means business. “Was there anything left behind when you moved in?”

“No, nothing.” Nick answers, softening when Louis intertwines their fingers. They’re not into public displays of affection, but despite everything, they do love each other. They’re obnoxious and sardonic and polar opposites, but they’re in love. It’s the little things. 

“It was only built a few years back, and as far as we know, we’re the first people to live here.” Louis adds, and Harry mulls it over. 

It’s like a switch is flipped inside that big, curly head of his. Harry’s eyes widen and he darts out to the hallway where he stares up at the ceiling for a beat. “The attic,” he breathes. Then, louder. “We have to check the attic!”

Louis doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at how pathetically  _ stupid _ this charade is. He feels like he’s in some bad movie. Nick lightens up, though, so Louis goes along with it, and hopes that they’ll find something that will help them put an end to it once and for all.

 

Nick slides across the hardwood floor in a fluffy pair of socks and launches himself onto the bed. He rolls across the mattress, stretching his limbs out and cracking his bones, letting the stress of the day leave his body. Louis is already tucked under the covers, glasses perched on the end of his nose as he reads an old, torn up copy of  _ Breakfast of Champions _ . He makes a little noise of protest when Nick nuzzles at his tummy. Nick peppers kisses across Louis’ skin, and it tickles, so Louis tells him to fuck off and rolls onto his side. Typical. 

“I don’t like you.” Nick says. 

“I don’t like you, either.”

They lay in silence for a bit, Louis still engrossed in his book, Nick listening to the sound of the dogs settling outside. It’s more peaceful than it’s been in weeks. “Still can’t believe all that shit we found in the attic.”

Louis takes off his glasses and rubs at his eyes. “Yeah, I never would’ve checked otherwise.”

It’s been two days since the lot of them (dubbed the Ghostbusters by none other than Zayn), had rummaged behind the walls of the attic to find a box of heirlooms left behind from before the work on their house began. As it turns out, they hadn’t bought a new build, just a renovated and revamped version of an old Victorian structure. This would have been common knowledge had either Nick or Louis bothered to read the fine print of their mortgage contract. 

The box in question contained hundreds of old fashioned film photographs, a lock of hair, and a wedding ring that Nick had jokingly proposed to Louis with.

Louis managed to bribe Niall into taking it to a storage unit (Harry refused to let them destroy it), and ever since, there have been no ghostly disturbances.

“He’s dead smart, is Harry. We should send him a fruit basket.” 

Louis turns back towards Nick, their faces inches apart. He laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners. “With a note that says ‘thanks for helping us banish the ghost?’”

Nick kisses him chastely. “Exactly, pet.” 

It’s still quite early, but Nick has to be awake for work in the morning. Louis doesn’t complain when Nick reaches over and shuts off the lamp, light bleeding in from the hallway under the door. Louis huddles closer to Nick and fits his head under Nick’s chin. Nick makes an offhand comment with a mouthful of Louis’ hair that it’s getting too long and fluffy. “Well, your hair is awful and so is your face.” Louis pouts, running his hand up Nick’s side. His shirt is soft and it smells like their laundry detergent. 

“I love you.” Nick says fondly.

Louis grumbles. “I love you, too.”

It’s the best night's sleep they’ve had in ages.


End file.
